Speaking of Mangle and the GCD, for bears (who I expect to remain GCD locked) I can’t see a whole lot of use for an improved Mangle that doesn’t reduce its cooldown to the next GCD; currently it’s an all or nothing talent as I see it, and that doesn’t look to change.

Fury Swipes looks lackluster all around; as described it triggers only on auto attacks, and with the cooldown when it does occur your next two (or three if you’re sporting 25% or more haste) attacks don’t have any chance to proc it. If it instead triggered on any melee strike, the way Sword Specialization does, it’d be more worthwhile since you could trigger it more-or-less every six seconds swiping the mob pile. On the other hand, if it triggers a true auto attack (ie, one which generates rage, unlike Sword Specialization) it could be kinda nice in a world where you can drop half your rage bar in one global.

Pulverize appears to be Blizzard’s answer to keeping Swipe completely out of the bear single-target rotation. Swipe was only ever used when Lacerate was at five stacks and didn’t need refreshing; now you’ll have Maul burning some of those Swipe GCDs, and Pulverize resetting everything right around the time you rebuild your five-stack. This leads me to think there won’t be a glyph to keep the Lacerates ticking.

Pulverize also sounds pretty great. I like abilities that play off of other abilities. It’s really satisfying to set everything up and then get a nice payoff. And who doesn’t like more crits?

I would have like an extra aggro effect from being in bear form, similar to the pallies Righteous Fury. Im finding that single target I can do well to hold aggro but sometimes I feel that everyone else can rip aggro away from me sooo easily…

* Keep all aggro from mobs on me instead of the team.
* Regain lost aggro as quickly as possible to keep mobs from interfering with other members of the team.
* Be as difficult to hurt as possible to ease the strain on the Healer to keep me alive through a fight.
* Be as difficult to hurt as possible to ease the strain on the DPS to kill all mobs before I and the Healer are overwhelmed.

Those last 2 points, Infected Wounds directly plays into.

Even in 5-mans or soloing. :)

I don’t tank raids. I run Heroics and normals. I’ve never written for serious raiders, and I never will. I have yet to meet main tank raiders that don’t eventually get into a “this is what *you* must do” mentality, based on the assumption that the only thing worth discussing is raiding. As if that was the only level of content of any importance, and everyone should just understand that.

I don’t write that way, because I am well aware that there is a lot more to the game than raiding progression, and there is a lot more to tank gear and talent choices than what is “best” for raiding.

If raiding is where you’re at, then Elitist Jerks is your one stop shop for all Bear tank raiding discussion.

I invite and welcome people to comment here, I always have. But there is a big difference to me between comments based on the format of “This is what I do, because this is what my goals are when I am tanking, and if your goals are the same, this may work well for you for these specific reasons”, and what I actually get a lot of, which is a binary solution set presented as “You posted your thing, and I don’t agree with you/I think you’re wrong, this is what is right.”

There are more ways than one to gear and spec, based on your gear availability, the content you intend to run, and your goals while running that content. If you run with all random strangers, your choices could be drastically different than if you play with reliable friends that don’t have their heads up their butts.

Maybe the core problem here is, I offered my own opinion on what I was intending to do, for me, based on my content goals for Cataclysm, assuming things stayed the same basic shape. But I didn’t specify in the first place WHAT those goals of mine were, what considerations I had when making my choices. I just went through the descriptions blind, musing on what I thought might work for me and why. I didn’t provide a frame of reference.

Regardless, if you’re first thought when wanting to post a comment is to correct me and put me in my place, hows about you take a step back, and rephrase things so that what you’re doing is presenting your opinions based on your own goals in the game, so that other readers can match up what you intend to do with what THEY intend to do, and pay attention to your advice for those reasons.

You seem to value threat over survivability. You might have a strong reason for that, but I disagree. As tanks, our first job is survival. If you are light on threat, dos can back off. If you are light on survival, the bosses will show you no such courtesy. I think you are doing a disservice to the raid by skipping IF.

I wonder if that means all druids will have access to it (by shifting into a feral form)?

Feral looks like its getting a nice dose of polish. Though cat and bear talents seem to be diverging, with stat simplification perhaps it will be very easy to build a shared bear/cat set. What I plan is, make the bear the “main” and if I get a nice upgrade to a piece, change enchants and gems on the old piece to make it a cat piece.

Must level a troll owl too, 100% conversion of spirit to hit means great gear synergy.

The cumulative effect over a long fight is gonna be fairly complicated to figure out though. Ah well, I’m sure EJ will have it covered once the talent trees stabilise towards the end of the beta.

Although you do raise another issue – calling the talent “Fury Swipes” when it has currently nothing to do with our “Swipe” ability is needlessly confusing :)

On a side not, my wife plays a Resto/Feral druid and I play a Holy/Retribution paladin. Awesome combination to duo almost any 5 man dungeon with. No healing required thanks to both Improved LotP and Divine Storm/Judgement of Light. Gotta love bears! My paladin feels so squishy next to her :)

Like stated above, Demoralizing Roar was said that it was going to be changed to a damage reduction, rather than AP reduction, so Feral Aggression could merit another run through after they finalize the trees.

The only other thing I really saw was that you mentioned possibly taking a point out of King of the Jungle. However, it looks like it might be tied to Primal Madness, so… yeah.

These previews are like delicious odors wafting from the kitchen, and we’re salivating out at the table trying not to eat too much bread. So good, and yet just shy of being filling.